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Thursday, 18 August 2011

The Religious Moral Compass and it’s tendency to point in the direction the believer is already facing

Believers‘estimates of God’s beliefs are more egocentric than estimates of other people’s beliefs.

Nicholas Epley et al have an interesting piece of research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science Oct 2009 whereby they claim that people are more likely to base their beliefs about what God’s attitudes are towards moral issues by modelling them in an egocentric way on what they already believe rather than on external sources as contrasted with the way in which people base their beliefs on what other people believe.

When we make inferences about what other people believe they are guided by two main sources – knowledge of our own beliefs which we project onto others and knowledge of others belief through their behaviour (verbal or non-verbal), or stereotypes of the groups that they belong to, or what other people tell us about other people’s beliefs. In the case of religious beliefs people do rely on religious texts, and what perceived experts on such texts inform them about what God believes. However such texts also allow room for various interpretations which subjects are able to select from. So there is clearly a two way process at work.

It may be thought that subjects will select whatever interpretation seems most plausible to them and so their beliefs are being guided by the religious texts and how they are best interpreted – in this way it would be thought that God’s presumed beliefs as inferred from the religious texts were being used as a guide for one’s own beliefs. Alternatively it could be that one’s own beliefs are being used as a guide for the sort of beliefs that God would have and people are filtering out different interpretations of what God is presumed to believe depending on what they already believe.

In order to try and tease apart the influence of peoples own beliefs on what they thought God's attitudes were towards moral questions and extrernal sources that informed them about what God's attitudes were towards such questions Epley et al asked subjects to rate their own attitudes to a range of issues such as Abortion, Affirmative Action, Death Penalty, Iraq War, Legalisation of Marijuana, and Same Sex Marriage and then to ask them what they thought two prominent American’s attitudes were towards the same issues (George Bush and Bill Gate) and the Average American. This gave them some level of correlation between their own beliefs, God’s presumed beliefs, and other people’s beliefs.

However, in another study they also manipulated subject’s attitudes about certain moral issues by giving them strong arguments supporting it and weak arguments against it, and again in another study they asked participants to deliver a speech in favour or opposed to the death penalty. Subjects in these two conditions had their attitudes manipulated by these procedures e.g. subjects who had to give a speech that was inconsistent with their prior attitude had their attitudes made more moderate. What was interesting about these studies is that they found that subjects beliefs about God’s beliefs followed in line with their newly manipulated attitudes whilst their beliefs about what other people believed were not affected as much.

Finally Epley et al used fMRI scanning whilst reporting their own attitudes, God’s presumed attitude, and what they thought the average American’s attitude were towards moral issues. They found that thinking about one’s own mental states and thinking about Gods presumed mental states activated the regions associated with egocentric thinking and projection of one’s own mental states onto others much more than thinking about what the average American’s views were on such issues.

They concluded that inferences about God’s beliefs tend to be egocentrically biased and the processes used to generate beliefs about God’s beliefs are relatively similar to the process that we use to generate one’s own beliefs. Whilst believers may acquire the beliefs of the theology of those around them they are also more likely to seek out religious beliefs that most resemble their own. Whilst religion is often taken to be the moral compass that is the ultimate moral authority that guides followers moral beliefs and behaviour this research lends weight to the idea that the religious compass does not point north whichever direction the person is facing but has a tendency to point in whatever direction they are already facing.

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Jim Al-Khalili (BHA President)

Prof. Jim Al-Khalili - 11TH BHA President - On Scientific Method

'I have a rational unshakeable conviction that our universe is understandable, that mysteries are only mysteries because we have yet to figure out, the almost always logical answers. For me there is simply no room, no need, for a supernatural divine being to fill in the gaps in our understanding. We’ll get there, we’ll fill in those gaps with objective scientific truths: [with] answers that aren't subjective, because of cultural or historical whims or personal biases, but because of empirically testable and reproducible truths. We may not get the full picture, we may never get the full picture, but science allows us to get ever closer.’ Jim Al-Khalili, BHA AGM 2013

"A lot of people say science is just one way of looking at the world, at reality, and poets and musicians and, of course, people of faith, have said there are other ways. I don't buy that. For me there is an objective reality that is there and real. For a theoretical physicist who's trained in thinking about quantum mechanics, which involves the idea that by observing something you alter its nature, you have to have some sort of working definitions of reality"Jim Al-Khalili in New Humanist magazine Mar Apr 2013

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Dick Taverne

Lord Taverne

Science depends on reason and regard for evidence. For me, the scientific approach lies at the heart of humanism as well as atheism. We all accept that science has made us healthier and wealthier. What has been seldom acknowledged or realised is that since the Enlightenment, which it helped to bring about, science has played an essential part in making us more civilised.

Science is the enemy of autocracy because it replaces claims to truth based on authority with those based on evidence and because it depends on the criticism of established ideas. Scientific knowledge is the enemy of dogma and ideologies and makes us more tolerant because it is tentative and provisional and does not deal in certainties. It is the most effective way of learning about the physical world and therefore erodes superstition, ignorance and prejudice, which have been causes of the denial of human rights throughout history. Science is also the enemy of narrow nationalism and tribalism and, like the arts, is one of the activities in this world that is not motivated by greed.

What can compare, for example, with the recent achievement of the Large Hadron Collider, a venture of collaboration by 10,000 scientists and engineers from 113 countries, free from bureaucratic and political interference? Those people put aside all national, political, religious and cultural differences in pursuit of truth and for the one purpose of exploring and understanding the natural world.

Without the contribution of science, which is, in my view, the rock on which atheism and humanism are built, we would be less inclined to be critical, tolerant and understanding and more prone to prejudice, bigotry and tribalism. We would be a less civilised society.

David Papineau on Materialism

'Our world is a fully material world. We don’t need to go outside Physics to understand the constitution of the Universe. Anything non-material would be epiphenomena and could never have any effect on the material world.' David Papineau (video) on Materialism

Richard Dawkins (BHA Vice-President) on Scientific Method

'Scientific method is a system whereby working assumptions may be falsified by recourse to reason and evidence.' (Photo: Chris Street, 2006)

Peter Atkins (BHA Distinguished Supporter) on Scientific Method

'The scientific method is the only reliable method of achieving knowledge. It displaces ignorance without destroying wonder.'

'Science can deal with all the serious questions that have troubled mankind for millennia' Peter Atkins

'My own faith, my scientific faith, is that there is nothing that the scientific method cannot illuminate and elucidate." Peter Atkins

Stephen Fry (BHA Distinguished Supporter) on Scientific Method

'Reason is almost akin to superstition, ... reason must be tested, testing is the very basis of science.'

Matt Ridley (BHA Distinguished Supporter) on Scientific Method

'Science is not a catalogue of facts, but a search for new mysteries. Science increases the store of wonder and mystery in the world; it does not erode it.'

Stephen Law (BHA Distinguished Supporter) on Scientific Method

'Empirical science is possibly the only tool ... for understanding the world around us'.

Lewis Wolpert (BHA Vice President) on Scientific Method

'Science is the best way to understand the world, for any set of observations, there is only one correct explanation. Science is value-free, as it explains the world as it is. Ethical issues arise only when science is applied to technology – from medicine to industry.'

Harry Kroto (BHA Distinguished Supporter) on Scientific Method

'The methods of science are manifestly effective, having made massive humanitarian contributions to society. It is this very effectiveness which the purveyors of mystical philosophies attack, because they recognise in it the chief threat to the belief-based source of their power and financial reward.'